


Falling Leaves

by Chelsea_E (CheyanneChika)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Autumn, Children, Friendship, One Shot, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-06 01:56:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8730124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheyanneChika/pseuds/Chelsea_E
Summary: Secret places to find in the fall.





	

They don’t fall in bunches.  They fall singularly.  One by one from each tree.  They don’t flutter either.  The only way to find raining leaves is to have it rain first.  Then they fall, all orange, yellow, gold and red, heavy with water and the wind and the gravity that knocks them from their tender hold on branches.  They come loose and fall silently.  But when they connect with Earth, there is the tiniest click.  The softest swish as they hit each other, wet dirt, puddles on the deck of a house.  They are much less pretty on the ground. The orange and red are wet brown now.  The yellow is dirty and the gold tarnished.  Saturated in water and time.

They squish under the boy’s feet, turning browner and wetter and sadder in their private bit of forest, an impossible wall of green in the summer, now brown and barren. 

Yet still a child’s wonderland.  Downed trees, thorny thickets and good handholds are all that are needed.  This particular boy lives here.  Home is too small for him when the vast forest beyond his yard calls to him with the whispers of wind, the falling leaves and fresh, damp earth untouched by the reek humanity.

On his own for today, he climbed the tree in his yard.  It’s an old thing with older branches and strength the others don’t possess.  It’s the only one strong enough to support the boy’s meager weight at the end of a branch that extends over the six foot high plywood fence that hides the yard from the trees.  With this branch, he can drop down on the other side.

It’s a bit of a drop and he usually jars his ankles on impact.  Today though, the raining leaves offered a cushion.  He landed and straightened without wincing.  He glanced up at the leafless branch that supported his freedom.  “Thank you,” he murmured.  If it answered, the rustle of wind in the forest swept it away.  He turned and started walking.

He knew these woods like the back of his hand.  They were old and new.  Alive and dead.  Dark and beautifully light.  Brighter on other days—the sky was overcast with the recent rain and the subtle threat of more coming.  The lightning, though, had passed with the early morning storm.  Any rain that came now would be soft and cause more raining leaves.

For they were here too.  Spots of gold and red against the grey sky overhead.  One landed with a plop on the boy’s face.  It was cold and wet and stained the world red until he blinked and removed it by its still strong stem.  He considered it and the ever growing piles of leaves on the ground.  Then he took several steps off his chosen path and laid it to rest on slanted tree.  If it dried out before the next storm, maybe it would be caught by the wind and swept off to some far off land.  Or maybe as far as the lake.  There it would float on the surface until a wave overcame it or a fish ate it or perhaps it would linger until the ice of winter came and froze it, forever red, like a rose trapped in amber, to be freed again in the spring.

The boy kept walking.  Some days he didn’t have a destination in mind.  Other days, he knew where he wanted to go.  Today was the latter.  He wanted to reach a specific tree.  He didn’t know what kind it was, only that it was old and strong.  He’d found it only once before but it was one of the tallest and, if he couldn’t find it on land, there were other trees he could climb and he could find it on the horizon.

That idea was becoming the best idea yet because he would have to be home by dinner and his freedom during the days was more important than the weeks he’d endure trapped indoors because he was foolish enough to wander in the forest alone.  He spun, looking for a tall tree with low handholds and spotted one to his left.  He approached and leapt.  The bark scored his palms but held.  He scrambled up and reached to the next branch.  The next was trickier.  It was too high to reach without jumping.  There was a lower branch but he’d half to drop down and select another branch in order to reach that one.  It would take too long.  He had to reach this one now.  He bent his legs and released his grip on the trunk.

“Hey!” called a voice as he pushed off.  The foreign sound jolted his entire form and he missed his grab.  He came down hard on the first branch.  Unable to balance, he pitched forward and the ground rushed up to meet him.  He connected soundly and the tremor rippled the earth and fluttered the wet leaves.  “Oh, sorry!  God, sorry.”

The boy blinked slowly.  All he could see before him was an ankle.  The skin was milky white between faded blue jeans and a filthy white tennis shoe.  The ankle was slender with bones that jutted out sharply.  What really drew his eyes were the five black stars that formed a half circle around that sharp ankle bone.  They gleamed like a reverse night sky, a white scape with black stars that brought light to the sky and strained to escape the hard white surface they were imprinted on.

“Are you okay?”  The ankle folded as the leg attached bent down into the leaves and dirt.  They boy moved a bit and twisted his neck to look up.  The leg was attached to a girl.  She was older, maybe fifteen to his eleven.  She had light brown hair and wide brown eyes that looked petrified as they stared down at him.  “Can you talk?”

The boy pressed a hand to the ground and pushed himself up.  “Yes,” he murmured.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” he murmured again.  It was true.  The rained leaves had cushioned him the same way they had by his fence.  His chest, knees and one arm were a bit sore but they were mild pains.  He’d incurred worse playing baseball.

“What were you doing up there?” the girl asked.

“Looking for a tree,” he answered.

“Well, there are quite a few.”  The girl glanced around casually, her eyes taking in at least a hundred trees before the utter brownness and yellowness of the world swallowed them up. 

The boy looked at her with dark, jaded eyes.  “A specific tree.”  He spoke as though she was not too bright.  Worse, he spoke as if addressing a big, dumb grownup.  Her lips tightened and she straightened, getting stiffly to her feet.  The boy glanced down again and watched her stars flex.

“Which one?”

“The tallest one.”

“And you know it _specifically_?”

The dark eyes snapped back at hers once more.  They were angry.  A quiet anger that savored looking down on her while looking up at her.  She stepped back and shoved her pale hands into the green parka that would’ve blended into the woods perfectly in summer.  Now it stood out with its utter forest greenness.  “You should go home.  Little boys shouldn’t wander around in the forest alone.”

“I’m not alone!  You’re here.”

“And if I wasn’t?”

“Then no one would know.”  The girl considered that fact and shrugged.  He was right.  If she wasn’t here, no one would know he was here either.

“What’s your name?” she asked suddenly.

He paused.  The wind picked up and some leaves lifted from the ground to pool at their feet.  A few more wet leaves fell with soft flumps on their fellows.  A faint smell of far off burning brushed by their noses before continuing on, further dispersing into nothing.  “Sammy.”

She smiled and stuck out her hand.  It was even smaller than his.  He took it.  It was warm but bony.  It didn’t make sense.  Her hands should be cold.  His were cold, by contrast, more noticeable now than before.  She smiled and let go, reaching back into her pocket.  She lifted out something small and held it before his eyes.  Sammy reached out and took it.  Heat flooded his palms.  “Microwave beanbags.”  She pulled out the other and clamped it between her hands.  “Cool, huh?”

He poked his lips out for a moment before nodding. 

“So, wanna talk about what you’re doing out here?” she asked.

“I told you I’m looking for a tree.”

“I know, but why?”

“Because it’s the tallest.”

“Oh...can I help?”  Little boys really shouldn’t be running around in this day and age.

After the longest pause yet, he muttered, “I guess.”

She smiled.  “Thank you.  My name’s Anna, by the way.”

He nodded.  This girl was as old as his sister.  But Tanya hated the woods.  She wanted her cell phone and her laptop with its webcam so she could see her friends without ever leaving the house.  The most frequent of those friends lived barely two blocks away but neither of them could bear the possibility of going outside.  It was just too awful a concept to imagine for her.

Of course, Sammy had no trouble picturing his sister and her friends.  They stood on a street corner, bundled like pink and black puffballs, their hands shaking from cold because they couldn’t where gloves and text at the same time.

This girl—Anna—was different though.  She didn’t even seem that cold.  Her hands were warm from the beanbags but the rest of her had to be icy in that parka and her too short jeans.  “Aren’t you cold?” he asked.

She shrugged.  “I’ll warm up if we start walking.  Do you know where your tree is?” 

Sammy considered and nodded.  Then he pointed over Anna’s shoulder.  She turned to look out at the barren woodland.  “Well, let’s get going.”   She started off without another word.  Sammy watched her crunch, well, squish dead leaves.

“Wait,” he called, guilt getting the better of him.  Anna turned, looked back.  He pointed to the right.  “It’s that way.”

Anna sighed and returned.  “Shall we?”

Sammy huffed and started walking.  Anna smirked and fell into step.

...

“So that’s the tree?”

“Yup,” Sammy replied.  He stared up at the tree he’d been looking for.  Anna noticed out of the corner of her eye that Sammy was smiling.  It was just the slightest upturn of pale pink lips.  Like it was ready to drop off the moment she turned to look at him.  So she looked instead at the tree.

It was certainly tall.  Tall and thick.  The trunk was wider than her, Sammy and then some.  Small dents were big enough crevices for handholds and knots jutted out where his feet could rest.  High up were balding branches.  What leaves were left were red and yellow leaves.  They were damp and limp.  Anna wished for a drop of sunlight.  Just enough to make rain drops shine.

No such luck.  Anna sighed and scuffed her shoes in the dirt, leaves and mossy sticks.

“I’m gonna climb it.”

Anna looked down at him.  He was frowning now, a thin, curve on his face.  “Okay.”

“You don’t have to stay.”

“Yeah right.  How could I leave now?”

“You can.”  He dropped his head to examine the teenager closely.  “I can find my way back from here.  I know where I am now.”

Anna shook her head.  She wasn’t going anywhere.

“Whatever,” Sam muttered mutinously.  He approached the tree slowly, leaves mushing under his grass stained sneakers.  A stick cracked like a gunshot, interrupting the stillness of the forest after a storm, when the birds were too nervous of another squall and the crickets were still drying their legs.

Anna shifted behind him, stretching her back, making bones pop with each move.  Sammy spun, watching her long torso rotate, shoulders to hips.  “Why do you do that?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“Crack your bones.  Only old people do that.”

Instead of speaking, Anna twisted away and shrugged out of her parka.  It stopped to pool at her waist and wrists, revealing a tight, long-sleeved shirt.  Slowly, she formed a fist with her right hand and raised it, elbow locked, in front of her.  Her back cricked and Sammy stared as Anna’s shoulder blade slid smoothly out of her back until it stood four inches away from the ridges of her spine, the shirt pulled against it.  She held there, her hand on a level with her shoulder. 

It occurred to Sammy that he needed to breathe and he inhaled sharply.  At the sound, she dropped her arm, hand flopping limply to her side.  Her bones slipped back into place.  She hiked up her jacket onto her shoulders once more, shivering.  The sleeves had cooled in their brief reprieve from arms.  She flexed her shoulders once more and turned to face Sam.  He was staring exactly where her bones had moved.  She waved and he snapped to, a smile on his face. 

“How do you do that?”

Anna smiled and blushed, looking down at her scuffed shoes.  “I dislocated my clavicle.  Docs say there’s nothing to be done about it.”

“Weird.  Does it hurt?”

She shrugged.  “Yeah.  But my mom’s friend gives me discounts on massages and acupuncture and stuff.  It helps.”

“Can you climb trees?” he asked.

She shook her head.  Then she looked at him again, a smile pressed firmly in place.  “But I can watch you.”

Sam’s lower lip prodded out, considering.  “I’ll tell you what I see, okay?”

She nodded and her smile grew.  She shoved her hands in her pockets and slouched, tilting her neck up to look at the crowns of the trees.  Not dead, not dying, just sleeping.  Sammy waited until her eyes met his and he turned to face the tree.  From a couple inches away, he looked up.  His eyes chased runnels of tree bark, looking for his favorite route up the trunk.  He smiled, showing teeth for the first time.

He reached up and grabbed at a niche that was easier to grab now than it had been a year ago.  Next he stuck a foot on a tall root and lifted the other to a knot a few inches off the ground.  He grabbed for another crevice and began to climb.

It was slow going at first.  Sammy pulled and kicked and made his way to the tree branches.  From there, he scrambled around for easy purchase, hopping, tugging, lunging and hanging onto rustling branches as he tried to go higher.  The branches trembled.   Leaves shook free and made for the ground.  They didn’t flutter.  They didn’t float.  They just fell to earth, and Anna, below.

She expected them to shatter on impact with the ground and shower her feet with shards of colored glass, diamond bright with the sunshine she longed for.

“What do you see?” she called up to Sam.   He paused.  She could only see the soles of his shoes, balanced precariously on a large branch.  “Well?”

“Green!” he called down.

“Green?” she called up.

“Green,” he said softly.  The forest before, behind, left and right was an endless sea of green.

Below, he knew, was red and yellow and orange and brown but for this very moment, it was green.  A green as dark as a murky pond against the puffy grey sky.  Sammy tore his gaze from the sky to look down at Anna.  She stared up at him, confusion staining her face, coloring her voice.  She saw no green.  Only brown and yellow and red and grey of sky, leaf and tree.

“Can’t see any green,” she called.

“Look,” he replied.  His voice drifted down like another falling leaf.  “ _Look!_ ”

“I am!”

The sun.  If Anna were to see, she would need the sun.  He turned on the branch, balancing as best he could.  Where...

There.  To his right.  The sun.

It was there, a silver, shimmering disc behind the clouds.  Would it join them?  “Come out,” he murmured.  “Come out.  Come out!”  The last was more of an order, loud and demanding.

“What?”  Anna cried, her feet shifting in the mast beneath them.

“Come out,” he whispered.  “Please.”

Like a waking cat opening a lazy, yellow eye, the sun peered out of the greyness, flooding the trees with light.  Anna gasped.  The grey sky vanished under a haze of green brightness.  The brown retreated under the onslaught.  The other colors thrived.  The lackluster red became rubies in the sky and garnets on the ground, the yellow turned to citrine and soft gold.  A ruby shuddered and fell, diamonds of dew scattering from it.

It landed with a plop on Anna’s toe.  She consulted it for a moment then looked up and laughed.  “I see it!” she yelled.  She danced a few steps and spun, waving her hands in the air.  “I see it!  I see it!”

It was glorious.  Beautiful.  Unbelievable.

And gone.

The cat went back to sleep.

The green faded away for both of them.  Browns seeped back into the world.  Sammy slowly clambered through the branches and eventually dropped back to the ground.  He rolled his ankles experimentally and looked up at Anna.  She was still looking at the sky.  Tears traced down her cheeks.  “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Aw, I didn’t do anything,” Sammy muttered, his face warm in the chill air.

She looked down, her brown eyes sparkled.  “You did.”  She held out her hand.  He took it and felt the warmth of heated beanbags.


End file.
